Rahll exulted. This was the first impulse he had ever tasted—his jagged cannibal's pattern contracted itself in ecstacy as he twisted the absorbed impulse into his own thought-form. He was still hungry, yes—and that hunger was hardly on the way to being satisfied—but at least this was a beginning. It fired him on—he must have more impulse, more, until he could branch out and find even more....
The hunger rushed over him in waves, deep, welling up from the pit of his thought-pattern, almost overcoming his form with its intensity. Yes, he would have more. Taking the first impulse had been simple; as soon as this other being had accepted the bogus odor as being normal, his frequency had become harmonious with Rahll's, and Rahll had moved a block into the channels through which the impulse flowed and absorbed the impulse. Now the block remained in those odor-channels, preventing other impulses from travelling in them.
Rahll turned his attention to the satisfaction of his hunger.
Brenner sniffed. That's funny—hadn't he smelled coffee a minute ago?
Wait a minute—he couldn't have smelled coffee. There wasn't any coffee on. But there must have been, because he'd smelled it.
He sniffed again. He couldn't smell anything now. Odd. He leaned back in his chair and listened as the atomic and electric generators hummed in the background....
The second block moved in.
The sound of the generators disappeared.
Brenner started. But he couldn't have heard the generators—they were off! He rose. All was silent in the ship. He banged on the control panel with his fist.